On the radical nature of Stoicism

 

On the radical nature of Stoicism

On 2/27/17 Grant Sterling wrote to the International Stoic
Forum in response to Nigel Glassborow:

*****
        I am entirely happy with the suggestion that when
we explain Stoic ideas to a lay-person, we should have
ways of explaining them that do not involve simply confronting
them with translations or transliterations of ancient Greek
sentences.  That is obviously true.  So, to that extent, I
am in complete sympathy with the basic suggestion of your
"plea for tolerance".  The problem I have, and what Steve is
trying to get at, is that what we need are ways of explaining
Stoic ideas to a lay-person so that they're easier to
understand, as long as those new ways of explaining things aren't
actually _modifications of the ideas_.
        So, for example, you rightly point out that it will
not be successful for a Stoic to tell their spouse "I consider
you an indifferent".  That wording won't accurately convey to
the spouse what you're trying to say (unless your spouse reads
lots of Stoic philosophy, of course).  The ordinary English
meaning of "indifferent" is not exactly what the Stoics are
talking about.
        But suppose you were in a situation where your spouse
really says "I know that you like Stoicism and I really want
to understand what it says".  And suppose that you judge that
it is appropriate for you to respond truthfully to this
request.  Then you can say things like "the Stoics think that
nothing outside our own choices are truly important to our
well-being" (or something like that).  And if, as the conversation
goes along, the spouse says "does that mean that you should be
exactly as happy if I were to die tomorrow as if I like?", the
Stoic should say "yes".  I suspect that most spouses would find
that view just as unappealing as being told that they are an
indifferent, but that's what the view says.  The person who
says "No, the Stoics think that some degree of unhappiness
should accompany the death of a loved one" is not "explaining the
Stoic ideas in different words"--that person is _lying_ about
Stoic views to make them more palatable.
        Stoic doctrine says that the lives of any human being
(including oneself) are indifferents (preferred indifferents,
yes, but still indifferents).  As such, one's happiness should
not be diminished even an iota by the deaths of anyone else.
One should not feel even the slightest negative feeling as a
result--no grief, no "upset", nothing.  [If anything, one should
be happy that the perfect god(s) have chosen to do this.]  That's
what Stoicism says.  There are any number of different ways to
explain this idea in English, but this is what the worldview says.
        So that's what Steve is getting at--it often seems as
though you're not merely "saying the same things in different words",
in which case of course tolerance is called for.  It often seems
as though you are denying fundamental Stoic truths, and that's
totally different.  It's like a husband who has had an affair and
has decided to come clean and admit it to his wife.  Rather than
say "I've been having sex with another woman", he may want to
approach things differently and use different words.  But those words
can't be "I've never had sex with another woman".

        Notice--the Greeks had many ways of expressing degrees
of distress.  What is critical to notice is that Epictetus
_doesn't_ use a different word.  He could easily have said
in Greek what Oldfather (is that right) translated him as
saying--he could easily have suggested that some distress was
ok in the case of a dead child and all we need to do is prevent
excessive distress.  But he doesn't say that.  Indeed, the entire
point of the passage is that we should start by working towards
being able to handle the breaking of a cup (or jug) without ANY
distress, and then work our way up to the point where we can
handle the death of a spouse or child without ANY distress.  The
passage is absolutely unambiguous.  You may not like what he's
saying, but that's what he's saying.
        And I think he's clearly right.
***

> To add to this we have from Cicero the suggestion that some Stoic ideas
> could be better talked of if one used two words to translate the Greek
> word ‘pathos’ (feelings) into Latin - namely ‘inner stirrings’
> (emotions) for what are to be seen as instinctive and natural feelings
> that are part of the nature of being a human social animal and
> ‘perturbations’ for those unnatural feelings that the Stoic is guided to
> avoid - namely the ones caused by incorrect judgements or false
> impressions that take one’s feelings to a stage whereby the ‘ruling
> faculty’ has it’s capacity for reasoned judgement swamped.

*****
        Cicero found Stoicism appealing but was not himself
a Stoic partly because Stoicism was too radical for him.
I am not aware of the exact passage that you refer to, but
the Stoics already had a Greek word for the distinctions _they_
made between a good, acceptable and unacceptable feelings:
Eu-, pro-, and (prescriptless) Pathos.  Only the Sage has the
first, the second is momentary and involuntary, and everything
else is in the third category.  None of these distinctions
correspond to what you find in Cicero.
***

> So it is right to see the Stoic exercise in dealing with the cup to be
> the same exercise required to deal with the loss of a loved one – but
> one is also right to class them of being of different degree of
> difficulty – to repeat,  Epictetus is advising his student to start with
> the easier situation.

*****
        Absolutely true.  One begins with the cup (or jug),
and works up to spouses and children.  Recognizing that the
lives of spouses and children are neither good nor evil is
much more difficult that recognizing that the breaking of a
cup is neither good nor evil.  I totally agree with you when
you say (as you have often said) that we must overcome ingrained
habits of seeing the world differently, and so moving towards
the Stoic ideal will be a long process that will have to be
completed one step at a time.
***

> This applies to many Stoic principles.  Something either is or it is not
> – there are no degrees in between.  But if something is, then (with the
> fact that this something is of the category that defines it) it is also
> to be found that that something may admit to differing degrees as to how
> much ‘force’ it may exercise.
>
> This is true of ‘pathos’ in that not all ‘pathos’ is at the level that
> Cicero classes as ‘perturbations that ought to be avoided’.  The
> critical factor in much that Stoicism offers us is that the ‘feelings’
> must answer to the rule of the ‘ruling faculty’ in that it rules through
> the reasoned appraisal of the impressions and the reasoned judgements
> that follow.

*****
        And then you plunge over the edge.  This is simply not what
the Stoics taught.  They gave a million examples that explicitly
deny this.  Whatever Cicero might or might not have said (and
remember, again, that Cicero thought Stoicism too radical to
embrace), everyone else in the ancient world understood Stoicism
in that way.  The logic of their argument leads inevitably to
that conclusion--they always asserted emphatically that all external are neither good nor evil, and everything outside of our own judgments
and choices are externals.  If the death of my spouse is neither good
nor evil, then NO distress, however slight, is appropriate.  That's
the view, Nigel.  In the first part of this post, you seem to be
offering Stoic ideas--it's _harder_ to avoid distress when a loved one
dies than it is to avoid distress when a cup is broken.  That's true,
for everyone except the Sage.  But that's not because it's ok to be'
distressed at the death--it's because the false view of the universe is
more firmly entrenched in that case, and harder to overcome.  It's like
a double dose of poison--it's harder to fight off than a single dose,
and it's more understandable when someone succumbs to it, but that
doesn't mean that we shouldn't fight against it.
***


> And in reasoning that all in our lives are ‘the gift of Fate’ and that
> Fate may at any time take such from us, then being ready for such an
> occurrence, in that we often have no idea when Fate will redeem any
> particular gift, we will be better able to prevent a ‘feeling’
> associated with the gift from running wild.

*****
        There is no feeling associated with the gift.  There is
a feeling associated with misunderstanding the gift, and thinking
it's one's own property that's being stolen.  In that sense, one
should think of it as being a gift and this will help prevent the
feeling of loss from arising.
***

> With practice we will be better able to cope and to keep our feelings
> within bounds whereby the false judgement that ‘Fate will never redeem
> the gifts it has bestowed on us’ will not be part of our reasoning about
> *anything* in our lives.  And as such while the ‘redemption’ may stir up
> natural feelings, such feelings will always answer to the rule of reason
> and we will not feel any perturbations – at least that is the theory.

*****
        This isn't Stoicism.
***


> So we practice on the little things, gradually habituating the idea that
> all is only on loan to us so that when things that carry a greater
> investment in feelings are taken form us we are better able to keep our
> feelings under the rule of reason.  In this, we are looking at feelings
> that the nature of a role demands, such as exampled in the natural
> feelings of a human social animal that relate to one’s role as a spouse
> or a parent.

*****
        Not according to Stoicism.
***


> Naturally this is not the total extent of the ideas behind
> ‘indifferents’ and ‘externals’, but it is part of it and it does offer a
> common sense approach to explaining some of the ideas that appear to be
> difficult concepts.

*****
        Indeed, it offers a common sense approach which is
an _alternative to_ what Stoicism teaches.  That's exactly
what Cicero offered--a less radical alternative to Stoicism.
***


> Nigel.

        Sincerely,
                Grant